In the last talk of this three talk series, Andrew Heard digs into the implications of the cross.
CREDITS:
The Reach Australia Podcast is brought to you by Reach Australia
To pray for Reach Australia, join our WhatsApp Group
For ideas or questions please email [email protected]
Support Reach Australia’s online library
TRANSCRIPT:
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
0:04
G Day, I’m Pete Hughes and you’ve clicked on the Reach Australia podcast.This is the last talk of three talks that Andrew Heard gave at our national conference in 2025.This series has been about the cross, about its need and what does it mean for us in ministry.
0:20
If you haven’t heard the first talks, I really want to encourage you to go back and listen to them first.But please enjoy Galatians.Chapter 6.Verse 11.See what large letters I use as I write to you.With my own hand, those who want to impress.
0:37
People, by means of the flesh, are trying to compel you to be circumcised.The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted.For the cross of Christ.Not even those who are.Circumcised.Keep the law.Yet they want.You to be circumcised.
0:54
That they may boast about your circumcision in the flesh.May I never boast, excepting.The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified.To me and I to.The world.Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything.
1:10
What counts is the new creation, peace and mercy.To all who follow this rule, to the Israel of God.From now on, let no one.Cause me trouble for I.Bear on my body the.Marks of Jesus, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, be with your spirit, brothers and sisters.
1:28
Amen.Well, we’re coming to the end.Let me pray.Father, we, we do ask please that you might speak through me words that are helpful and honour you.And we do pray for all of us that you would help us see who you are, what’s needed, that we might be gripped by the cross, that we might leave this place captivated by what you’ve done for us and that we might give our lives in service of you.
1:54
And we ask it in Jesus name, Amen.Well, do you see where we’ve come from?We, we started with that whole idea of may I never boast, may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.We’re not to boast in our righteous deeds.We’re not to boast in our successful ministries.
2:14
We’re not to boast in our amazing families, your amazing family.We’re not to boast in anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, but in the cross, that cross is not just a thing that gives us entry into the Christian life.
2:33
It transforms everything about the Christian life.And one of our challenges is that it’s, it’s very often the case that people are not appreciating this and we need to find ways to bring this to the surface.Many years ago, Kathy and I, we used to run a water sports camp where we take away crowds of young teenagers and try and get them converted and bring them to the faith.
2:54
And we’ve been doing it for some years.We would take them away.We’d do, you know, water skiing and surfing and sailing and all of that kind of stuff.And in the midst of that, we have talks around the cause of the gospel, the person of Jesus.This one year we went away.I think we had about 70 year, 11 twelves, and we were going through this material, the talks and the Bible studies and so on.
3:17
And after a couple of days, it became very evident that almost all of them thought they were Christians for some reason that we we’d had a particular unusual crowd of kids who’d come from youth groups in churches.And as we talked with them, though, it became very evident that they sounded like they were Christians, but they weren’t actually understanding the gospel.
3:37
And we were trying to trying to wrestle with how can we crack that open and get people to see themselves for what’s going on.And so I came up with this debate option.So instead of doing what we’re going to do, I thought, let’s throw a debate question and see if we can crack that nut and get people to see where they’re at.
3:54
There’s a sense in which you need to unsave people before you can save them.You know, that kind of thing.And and so the debate question was this.It was unless you’re prepared to give up achieving your interests, ambitions, and what you want in life, you can’t be a Christian.That was the question.
4:11
Now I intended to take to the group.There was sort of 70 kids, 20 leaders, so about 90 people in a hall.And I was, I was a bit very nervous about whether this would work.And so I had AI had a debate question on sex because I thought that would work.So I had that as my backup, right.But I, I put it to the group.
4:29
I, I, I said I what I want you to do in a second is vote whether you think this is a true or false statement.And here’s the statement.Unless you’re prepared to give up achieving your interests, ambitions, and what you want in life as a person, you cannot be a Christian.Do you think it’s true?Do you think it’s false?So I’m going to do it with you.
4:47
So here’s the question.I want you to think in your mind, which is where you usually think I want you to think.Don’t when you introduce yourself in church and say, hi, my name’s Andrew.If you don’t know me, don’t do that because it’s still your name when we know you just by the way.
5:05
But anyway small anyway.So here’s the question, unless is it true?Unless you’re prepared to give up achieving your interests, ambitions and what you want as a person in life, you can’t be a Christian.Is that true?Just think in your own mind where you do it.
5:21
Is that true?Is that true?And make it say yes or no in your head.I put it to the 702090 and I got them all to close their eyes and vote yes or no.And of the 90 people in the room, of the 70 kids, 69 of the 70 kids said it was false.
5:47
One kid said it was true.And if you ask me later, I’ll tell you who it is.Of the 20 leaders, 19 said it was true.One said it was false.Come to me later, I’ll tell you who that was.I had a quick conversation with him and he changed his mind.
6:08
Now, which way did you vote?Now what happened then was I got all the, I got all the 70 or the 69 kids in the groups of 10.And I said you’ve got 15 minutes to prepare a 5 to 3 minute response to why, to have someone come up and tell us why you think it’s false.
6:24
And I got the 20 leaders and one kid into a group of two, two groups of 10.And I said, you’ve got the same time to prepare.Why you think it’s true?And it was the most extraordinary night administrator I’ve ever had because the first group, they all as groups, everyone was energized.
6:41
The first person got up and said our group thinks it’s false because God has given us many interests and ambitions and he wants us to be happy.And so he would surely want us to pursue our interests and to be happy.Sat down to much applause.
6:57
The first representative of the leaders got up and did this.Turn to Mark chapter 8.Grab your Bibles.Turn to Mark chapter 8.Turn to Mark chapter 8.Get there quickly because I’m running out of time already.
7:15
Mark chapter 8.I think you know where we’re going.Verse 35.No, no, sorry.Verse 34.They got up and said Jesus called the crowds along with his type and said whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.
7:38
And then they went to another Bible verse and another Bible verse.Then the next group of 10 got up and said God wants us to be happy.My interest playing guitar makes me happy.He wouldn’t Now what they’d stumble on is that afternoon in preparing the debate question I was looking at, I was looking at Matthew Mark chapter 8 verse 34 and I thought, I don’t think they think that’s true.
8:04
But I know if I had a debate and said, do you think it’s true that whoever wants to be Jesus disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him?Do you think that’s true or false?What would they all have said?True.But if I made it so it didn’t sound like it came from the Bible or was the words of Jesus, you know what they said?
8:21
It’s false.So what does that tell you?They don’t think Jesus is right.Now, here’s the thing.Most of them came from youth groups.Most of them thought of themselves as Christians, but most of them did not understand the Christian message or the gospel.They didn’t understand the cross of Christ in a profound and deep way.
8:41
The cross of Christ is not just a doorway into the Christian life where I now am set free to do what I want to do and live out what I want to live.It’s an entire transformation of life.And I want to show you this from a couple of passages.Come back with me to Galatians chapter 3.Galatians chapter 3.
8:57
How did you answer the question?But come back with me to Galatians chapter 3.One of the things to notice through this passage is he does a couple of things.Verse 10 for all the rely on works of law under curses written cursed, everyone does not continue to everything in the law.Why are they under a curse if they pursue works of law?
9:13
Because we can’t continue to do everything in it.But verse 11, he repeats the thought clearly.No one who relies on the law is justified before God because now what do you expect him to say?Because they can’t do everything written in it.
9:32
But what does he say?He says because the righteous will live by faith.It’s a quote from Habakkuk.And you go, whoa, had where did that come from?Well, it came from Habakkuk.
9:48
Thank you.But in his train of thought, how did he end up there?Well, what’s the context of Habakkuk?It’s the whole life posture of a person that the way the person in right relationship with God lives is by trusting God in the good and the bad, the hard, the ugly, they trust God.
10:08
And I want to put this to you, that faith, that faith in God has always been God’s purposes for all of life, for all of his people.In the garden, he said, do not eat from that tree.What posture aught human kind of had towards the God who issued that command.
10:25
Now remember, he’s the God who made all things.He’s the one who upholds all things.And to try and give you some sense of what I mean by that, let me use an illustration from another dear brother, Andrew Moody.Very I’ve got love my, my, my Dave and friends like this wonderful.Here’s his illustration.
10:41
He says God is the God who rules over all things, us included in a way, in a way like humans rule over virtual reality and you know, virtual reality.It’s when one of those nerd computer groups creates a software thing so complex you don’t understand what’s going on, but you can, you can look through this thing and you’ve got a screen where you actually enter into a new world and they’ve created through all the computer thing, the world that exists in virtual form.
11:06
Now there’s a sense in which we are that virtual reality, the creation is this is a virtual reality made by God.Now it’s just an analogy because we do have a reality.We’re not just an unreal, but our reality.Here’s where the analogy works.
11:22
Our reality is only ever at any time enabled by God, that there’s nothing that we have on our own.Nothing exists that’s ours independently.God is the only self existing. 1 He has existence in himself.
11:43
I am who I am and all of existence depends on him.He doesn’t depend on anyone.He is the self referential 1 and how a whole life is dependent on every word that comes from the mouth of God.He upholds the whole universe by his word.
12:01
At any time that he he ceases to speak the word that graciously uphold, we disappear.We are entirely dependent on every moment.You see now in the garden, in the beautiful garden the God made in all its glory for his greatest created being, His image bearer, men and women to share in his joy.
12:26
What posture order human have who understands this truth about God as the Creator before whom all things exist?By whom?What posture order we have to that God who gives us one rule, don’t eat that one.
12:42
What posture order we have had?Trust him.Trust him implicitly without question, so that when the tempter comes and says he only prohibited you from eating that tree because he doesn’t want you to thrive, what should we have said in return?
13:08
What our God, the one who made all of this in it’s every beautiful aspect, who gives us life and breath?Fool you, fool you arrogant, ungrateful fool.We trust him, depart from us.
13:25
That’s all we should have done.And that’s the posture we were always to have before God.Glad, confident, trust in His goodness because He’s good. faith in God expresses most properly the way a creature relates to this kind of God, the God who is absolutely kind and the purity of love.
13:59
We are a being.We are beings that only exist by pure gift.Our lives only existed every moment by His generous, gracious provision, and we are only saved by pure gift.
14:20
This is how an utterly dependent creature must be towards it’s creature Creator, trusting that’s how you must be.We are utterly at all times at His mercy, not just at the moment of salvation.
14:39
But why ought we not engage with God by the means of doing to earn His favour?Because the righteous who is in right relationship with this kind of God-given, the nature of our creation and the way He is towards us, the way we ought to always be towards is by faith.
15:04
And the law, says Paul, is not based on faith.That is the way of doing works of the law is not based on faith.It is based on putting him in our debt.
15:21
Now there’s questions some of you will have about the nature of the Mosaic covenant’s relationship with the Abrahamic company and what part of the law and have that discussion and debate.Sometimes it’s important to do, but we don’t need to engage ourselves with that.We just need to recognise at the moment that God’s way of salvation, God’s way of salvation is the way that he saves us.
15:41
He saves us in the same way that He urges us to live every day.Do you see?The way he saves us is by grace alone and faith alone in Christ alone.The way we’re meant to live every day is the same.God’s purpose at the beginning was Him to be a giver, pouring out His gifts out of the overflow of His love, the love that the Father and the Son and the Spirit have shared with for eternity.
16:13
They overflow in love to pour out into a creation, to pour out into our lives, to freely bestow on grateful recipients who join in His love.God is love, and what is love?It’s giving.
16:29
God is a giver, A generous giver whose glory is that he gives and gives.And our response, the response that glorifies him as God, is to thank him all our days for everything and glorify him as God and know him and enjoy him forever in the overflow of his love.
16:48
As we love him well, aren’t we also to do his bidding?Yes, of course, of course.But His bidding is the action that is His gift to us for our best.
17:09
The perfect son, the Lord Jesus, rejoiced to obey his Father.He didn’t begrudgingly do it.He rejoiced to obey His Father.He only did what He saw His Father do, because every act of serving His Father was goodness to him, was life to Him.
17:27
Because the law that the Father gives is the law of love.Whatever law of God gives is His act of blessing us, not oppressing us.His law is perfect freedom.
17:44
John 8.Do you remember that?Very.If you become my disciples, you’ll know the truth, and the truth will set you free.Not if you know the truth, you’ll become my disciple.Very interesting.If you become, I thought you’ll know the truth and the truth will set you free because it’s coming into Christ that I now have my eyes open to see the truth of what life is about.
18:03
It’s serving and loving him because that’s where love is found in the service and love of my father.Becoming a servant of the living God, this God, this God, the God.Like this isn’t reducing and diminishing me, it’s enlarging me.Don’t have sex outside marriage.Is that oppressive, harsh, unfair?
18:25
It’s goodness to us.It’s God’s gift to us, whether you can see it or not.You trust him because he’s a good God.You see the roles of men and women, headship, submission, complementarity, these kinds of things.
18:42
Are these harsh and oppressive and unfair?No, no, when you rightly understand them in the Scriptures.We need to do like work all the time.We need to interpret them correctly and so on.And not all of that, but, but whatever we find God’s intended meaning in these things, which seem pretty straightforward, whatever his intended meaning is, it’s his gift to us.
19:02
It’s his loving gift.Trust him, trust God’s good word.God’s intended purpose for his universe is love.It is love, the generous giving of each to another with Him leading the way, that we love him and one another.
19:20
Love that fosters an honour of him, that honours him as the great lover, the Holy 1, the righteous One, who is the God who gives and gives and gives.Now I don’t know what your Father was like.Your actual Father.
19:38
Some of you need to process out the way your dad was towards you that you can come to terms with the way God actually is and should be.Be aware of that.God is pure goodness, He is pure love, He is pure grace.
19:57
So when he saves us, it must be by grace and not works, because the law, the path of works of the law, turns us in to become proud.Boastful salvation must be by Him doing it all for us, so that it turns us out to be what He called us to be from the very beginning.
20:22
People who love, trust, and adore Him.The righteous will live by faith.Now there’s another step, though.This is why the cross is far more profound than merely a ticket to heaven, because the cross deconstructs and reconstructs.
20:41
The cross deconstructs the life of a human.When you come to the cross, you die and you have your life deconstructed.You get deconstructed from one who is living for self justification, self-serving, into necessarily one who has been humbled and becomes a trusting dependent upon my Heavenly Father.
21:09
The cross deconstructs me.It it, it necessarily brings, if you understand the cross properly, as we’ve been trying to do these last two days, it necessarily brings you back to the posture of existence He intended for you all your life.
21:26
That we honour Him as the giver and trust in Him for His gifts, His good gifts.The cross kills us.It deconstructs us now.This is Galatians chapter 2.Have a look at verse 20.
21:44
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live dead.Deconstructed the life I live now.I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
22:07
Did you see it all emerge?The life I now live is I’ve been deconstructed, I’ve been undone, I’ve been crucified.The old life of self-serving, self justifying, proud merit demolished.When he died, that way of life died with him.
22:25
I was united by the Spirit in him.I died with him, and then he reconstructs me so that the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
22:45
Do you see deconstructed, reconstructed, reconstructed in the image of Christ as the one who is now again recognising that life is all about honouring and pleasing my Heavenly Father, living in faith with Him, trusting Him in all things.
23:06
It’s all about trusting Him for every breath, every moment, for all my joy in Him, every gift.This means that the means by which God saves us in the cross, the means by which we are saved through the cross, is by faith, is the very thing He saves me now to live by.
23:27
Have you ever heard that phrase converted by as converted to whatever process or you you were converted by whatever thing you were converted by will end up being the thing you converted to.If you’re converted by faith alone, death in the cross alone by the grace of God in the cross alone.
23:44
If you’re if you’re converted by faith alone not works you will live by you’re converted to faith alone as a life posture to God.It changes everything.That is why essential to faith is repentance.
24:02
Repentance is to turn from trusting yourself, ruling yourself, to turn from self justification, self rule, self-made man, woman, to trust him and bow to him and live for him.May I never boast in anything except the cross of Christ.Now notice this chapter 6 come across.
24:19
May I never boast, May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.Look, look at the next little piece through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.Paul intends that by the cross, God intends.
24:38
Well, Paul explains that God intends by the cross that we die to the world and die to the ways of the world.But it’s deeper than that.All that is of the old world has died to me, and me to it.If you understand the cross, he illustrates it with circumcision.
24:57
And again, some of you will have slightly different takes on the way this works, but verse 15, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything.What counts is new creation.Circumcision, the site of the old covenant, and here’s where you may have it’s come to its end, its culmination in Christ.
25:16
Don’t go back under the law.What counts is new creation being deconstructed, dead in Christ, raised again, brand new.Dead to the old, alive to the new.Live to the new world of freedom in the spirit of Christ, freedom in the spirit of love.
25:34
A new liberation in the life of the Spirit of the Son being remade and reshaped in his image from 1° of glory to another.Deconstructed, remade to be all that Jesus is.The coming of Christ is death was ours with Him brings us into a whole new existence.
25:52
We are remade to be the people who are now brought back to be those humble trusting ones that He always intended for us, who now look to God for all we have, living our lives of trusting Him for all things, who live by His will.Now if this is right, if my understanding of this passage is correct, you would expect to see it elsewhere in the Bible.
26:12
Can you think where you might else Will soon 2 Corinthians 5 flip over there?
26:35
Look at verse 14.Christ’s love compels us, constrains us, convicts us, takes us captive because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all died.
26:58
All believers died and he died for all that.Those who live should no longer live for their interests, ambitions and what they want in life.They should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again.
27:22
The cross is about putting to death that old life, the life that was lived in pursuit of my ambitions, my interests, and what I want in life.That’s what the cross was about.It was about bringing to life a new life that is lived by faith in the One who loved me and gave himself for me, that I might now live by faith in Him.
27:48
Humbly trusting Him.What He commands I delight to obey and seek by the power of the Spirit to obey.And I seek to live trusting Him for what my life is now about and what’s best for my life and what matters most in my life.I trust Him now for that.Now if you find yourself balking at some of this and finding yourself saying, are you saying I can’t have any of my own interests anymore?
28:19
It’s a tricky question.What does it mean when you say that?If it means, are you saying I can’t have part of my life where I can just do what I want anymore and not what God wants?
28:36
Are you saying I can’t have my own interests where I can just do what I want and not?What are you?Are you saying that?What’s the answer?Yes, 100% is what I’m saying.But are you saying I’m not free to enjoy things that I like doing?
28:54
Not saying that, but with strong caveats.Are there things that we’re free to enjoy as gifts of God done out of faith for his generosity?100% He gave all good things for enjoyment.
29:13
We’re not aesthetics.We’re not people who go and live in caves and eat grass.Did you see?He gave us all good, rich, beautiful things.And if.Yeah, yeah, yeah.But, but, but do you know, the danger here is the sinful flesh is still alive and well, and the deceitfulness of sin is such that I go, ah, good.
29:33
I can still still pursue my interest then out of glory to God.And I go, woah, what do you mean by that?And what’s going on in your heart with that?Oh no, I’m going to be the great career person to the glory of God.
29:48
No, no, you’ve not understood the cross.I’m going to be the great sporting professional who roams the world doing what I want to do to the glory of God.No, no, no, you’ve not understood what the cross is about.Do you understand?The deceitfulness of sin is perverse in our hearts.
30:05
And so that whole discussion becomes tricky, but really important to have together as brothers and sisters in Christ.Tricky but complex and wonderfully important.The very essence of life now by being deconstructed in the cross of Christ and being raised again to life in the image of Christ, to be like Him from 1° of glory to another.
30:25
The very essence of life is now not my will, but yours.You’re dead, your life’s over.He’s remade you to be the one who lives now for him, not for yourself.You got that.
30:41
Does that mean I can’t have any interest?No, but it’s tricky.I think one of the postures we need to have to try and navigate this trickiness because it is, it isn’t straightforward.
30:58
I have things I enjoy doing and I give thanks to God for them.My wife and I enjoy things and think, you know, we, we, we, we aren’t living the, the oppressed life where we only ever go around teaching the Bible and telling people to repent and believe.
31:14
We, you know, we do enjoy things as well as enjoying that as well.I must say.But but but I think a posture that can help you is whatever your interests and ambitions are.Lay them at the foot of the cross and say I’m dead to them unless unless I can see a way to engage such that it continues to enable me to fulfil your purposes in the world and give myself to the great gospel ambitions unless it doesn’t distract me and trip me up.
31:50
Hebrews chapter 12.I’m putting the foot of the cross recognizing that some of them I can take back up again, but under the grace of God with great things.You see the complexity here, but we do need, if you’re, if a, if a young man or woman’s on the track in training in a certain direction, I want them to come to a crisis point of saying, you know what, Maybe I need to stop this and give this up for the sake of the glory of God because his purposes are bigger than my ambitions.
32:18
I want, I want everyone to go through that crisis moment every week.You know what I mean?We boast in the cross, not just as a doorway into heaven, not just as ticket to heaven, which then had the fine print on it that said, oh, you now must obey, Chris.
32:43
God’s purpose was always for obedience.Last night with theirs.The cross is the event by which I was crucified.The old man died with him.It was the event in which my life of living for myself was crucified, my old life deconstructed.
32:59
The event with which I was rescued from this present evil age, the age of rebellion, living for myself, living in the world of trusting myself.And it was the event by which I was born again into a new age, a new realm, the realm of the Spirit where I live now by faith in everything, to return again to the posture that He intended for me.
33:19
May we never boast.No, I’m not finished yet.I’m almost there.May may I never boast.May we never boast in anything except the cross of Christ, because it changes everything.It changes your whole life.It hangs over us all our days.It’s the great glory of God.
33:36
His scars will remain, probably the only resurrected body with scars that will remain because they’re the badges of honour that we’ll continue to delight in for all our days.You see, it is possible to boast but not really boast.It’s possible to value but not really value.
33:53
It happens when you don’t appreciate the horror of our rebellion and how how truly astonishing what God has done for us in the cross ears.It happens when you don’t appreciate the true orientation of even the best human towards independence, towards not trusting God, towards shallow turning, towards a secret sense that God is not All in all.
34:16
It happens when you don’t appreciate the radical transformation that God intends to work in our lives such that now we no longer live for ourselves.We no longer live for ourselves.That’s gone, it’s dead.But that’s God’s gift.That’s his gift to us.If you find yourself going, oh, that’s the flesh still rising up and pray God you’re on a journey, but where you need to come to is go.
34:44
What a joy that I no longer live for myself now, but for Him who died for me.Now what does all of this mean for the conference?Well, the churches we run are to be places full of life and love, not oppressive rules.
35:01
But there’d be places of orts and commands and expectations.But the tone and posture must be places of life and love.In the love of God, who calls us to obey Him.By trusting him, we had to pursue what we call fools, salvation, which an old Christian leader has once said, we’re not merely to check the box of faith, not works.
35:27
We’re not merely just to trust, make sure that people aren’t trusting in their own works, but we’re what we’re the outcome we’re after is a whole life’s transformation where they’re dead to their ambitions, wants and desires and now embracing God’s desire so they’re radically transformed to want to live for Christ.
35:44
That’s the ambition we that’s the outcome we’re after, not just bums on a seat.Whoever thought that that’s what we were interested in And God’s desire, you see, as we’re resurrected in the in in the person of Jesus to become more and more in his image, what’s his desire to seek and save the world.
36:10
So if you’re dead to self and alive to Christ and are now in Christ, your desire more and more should be to have an urgent desire to save the world, the render saved.And if you haven’t got the urgent desire, stop calling yourself mature.I find it very interesting that Christian leaders talk about their church being very mature, just not evangelistically minded.
36:34
Yeah, it’s interesting.The way we run our churches is not programmatic.It’s not secular business.Perish the thought.It’s by faith in His Holy Spirit who works amongst us.So the key to our work is prayer.
36:52
Unless the Lord builds the house, we labour in vain.It’s prayer and more and orientation of life that all I have as a leader, all you have as a leader, all we are is His.We proclaim Him, not ourselves, and we lead in faith.
37:10
That is, we lead with utter joyful dependence on the Lord of the harvest.And we do it full of courage because it’s His work before it’s our work.So we can therefore take risks with everything.
37:29
When we started this ministry, Kathy and I30 years ago or 29 or whatever, it was quite an extraordinary experience for us.We I was, we were involved in ministry.I was and I’m an ordained Anglican minister.If you ever wanted to be interested and in Sydney, right.So I’m in, I’m in ministry in Sydney established in a church there having we’re having a great ministry.
37:47
We’re loving the work.And when we just when we actually said we’re leaving in our heads and hearts, when we went, OK, we’re leaving now.It felt like jumping off a bridge.If you ever jumped off bridges.
38:03
We used to jump off the Spit Bridge, which is illegal.But anyway, before it was illegal, before it was illegal and just said that publicly.Haven’t I?It’s but do you know that feeling when you jump off a high thing?You, you, you’re on safe ground, you’re standing on safe ground and as and as soon as you do that, there’s no going back and and there’s a risk when you do it were for us where there’s a speedboat come underneath it.
38:32
So there is and and it, I tell you it literally, I, I remember sitting at my desk.I can see the whole context.We’re going to do this and it felt like stepping off a bridge.But you know what?It shouldn’t have felt that way.Now, why did it feel that way?
38:49
Because in a weird way, the security of the denomination had got its roots into me.So I felt like stepping out of the denomination was leaving solid ground.
39:07
Well, that just proved to me how lacking in faith I was.And as I stepped, it wasn’t into open air.What was it?Into the arms of the sovereign God of the universe who upholds all things, who can make and break and do whatever He.
39:25
I wasn’t stepping into air.So it was this really solitary moment of going.You know what?Something’s happened to him.It’s not been very helpful.And something wonderful is about to happen to me where I actually now realise God’s All in all.And you know what?I’m still alive.I look like this.
39:45
My wife’s got better and better, but look at me church planning.Brothers and sisters, those of you who are doing it, take the go for it.There’s no risk.You’ve got God.
40:02
He runs the universe.Trust him.Step out church leaders of any kind.You, we do our ministry always under the rule in the hand of God.He is with you.Trust Him, which means you’re always safe to make changes.
40:20
It’s OK.Don’t give interfere.Don’t give interfere.Learn how to do it.Learn how to make wise changes and all of that.But whatever you do, recognise that everything we do is under the hand of a sovereign God who wants his church to reach the World.
40:40
And if you step out to make changes, to pursue growth and change, what a great name for a book.If you pursue growth and change, if you step out to do that, you, you are, you are stepping in line with the purposes of God.Now you might be making a dumb decision with some of the changes.
40:58
So get some help and talk that through, of course, but don’t, don’t do it.Don’t not do it because of fear.Honour him.He will carry you.It may go badly, but not that bad.
41:14
You’ll be OK.They may kill the body.Those hymn books are really serious, are they?Now We’re coming to the end.And I want to finish just simply by saying there’s an urgent task before us, our country, the world.
41:33
But we’re in this nation.Go to the end of the earth.Go to all the nations.We’ve come to this one and this nation is desperately in need of the gospel.So are many other nations.We need to raise up people and send them off, of course, but this is Reach Australia conference.
41:49
You can have the CMS conference if you want, right?But but the urgent task before us is to reach the country of 27 million people, a tiny percentage of which know the Lord Jesus.
42:07
The rest are without hope, without God, and are facing a Christ less future in hell.We talked about that Tuesday.He has worked to save by giving his only son.
42:26
That’s how much he cares about us.A death, He died, a death that achieved great success.So we move out in faith in him, trusting him and all things confident that the one who died and was raised again is ruling the universe and he is the great missionary.
42:50
And we cannot lose.We cannot lose.A life poured out in the service of this risen Lord Jesus is a life well spent.You cannot lose.Is that enough?Let’s pray well only Father, we, we thank you for Your word that reveals so much deep and profound insight into who you are that cuts through our sinful minds and hearts and helps us see the truth that we keep burying.
43:27
That You are the Holy 1.You are the good, loving and gracious 1.You do not desire the death of anyone.You’ve given your only Son.You did not spare him, but gave him up for us all.We pray, please, that you would help us be transformed by these truths so that we might never boast in anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
43:49
Please let that be true of us.Help us dig the depths of what it means and help me help us.Please go from this place full of confidence and joy that we are safe in your hands pursuing the purpose you intend to pursue.And you the Sovereign Lord will guard and protect and walk with us and go before us that you have a great number of people in this country yet to be saved and we pray that you guys send us out from this place in great confidence.
44:15
We prayed in Jesus name, Amen.Well, that was Andrew Heard, and I hope these three talks have profoundly helped you to understand the glory of the cross, the mercy that we need, and the importance of continuing to live under the shadow of the cross.
44:37
Please take some time, pray and process what you have heard.There are more conference resources to come, so make sure you keep an eye out for that.I’m Pete Hughes, chat soon.
